Teenager takes on a corporate monster

January 21, 2004 — 11.00am

It is the story of David and Goliath set in cyberspace. A 17-year-old Canadian college student called Mike Rowe, a fledgling web designer, stirred the ire of software giant Microsoft by setting up a company called MikeRoweSoft. The inevitable legal threats quickly followed.

The tale, first told last week by Rowe on his website, has drawn massive response from around the world. By the weekend his website had received more than 250,000 emails from supporters, many offering money to help pay a defence lawyer. Email traffic was so heavy it crashed his service provider's computers. Another ISP came to the rescue.

"My name is Mike Rowe and I thought it would be funny to add 'soft' to the end of it," the 12th grade Vancouver student said.

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But south of the border, in Redmond, Washington, the company headed by Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, did not see the joke. Instead, Canadian solicitors Smart and Biggar were briefed to hit the young man with heavy legal gunfire. Rowe was accused of copyright infringement because his company's name sounded like "Microsoft". It could "confuse Microsoft's customers", the lawyers said.

Rowe was told to transfer the name to Microsoft, take down the website and bow to the might of the giant corporation.

Unabashed by the threats and not about to sink his fledgling enterprise without a fight, Rowe wrote back seeking compensation if he was to give up what was, in fact, his own name.

The lawyers offered him $US10 ($A13), the sum he had paid to register the internet name mikerowesoft.com. Rowe said he might consider $10,000.

Smith and Biggar's response was a 25-page letter demanding that Rowe admit to being a cybersquatter and of trying to force Microsoft into giving him a large settlement for the name.

Rowe said he had asked for $10,000 because "I was sort of mad at them for only offering 10 bucks". He insists he had not the slightest intention of blackmailing Microsoft over the name.